Walter Olson
Number twelve in our series of occasional roundups on election law and policy:
Coming next week! I’ll be hosting an online Cato discussion on lessons of the NYC mayoral primary for ranked choice voting and other election reforms with Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, independent election policy author David Daley, and John Ketcham, who works on governance issues at the Manhattan Institute. It’s Wed. August 6 at 3 p.m. Eastern. Register here;
The Department of Justice is asking states, along with some counties, for copies of their voter lists and related election info. Some of the data is nonpublic, sensitive, and legally protected. Justin Levitt of Loyola Law doesn’t think DOJ has shown it’s entitled to “what it’s requesting, even if it were telling the truth about why.” [Election Law Blog, StateLine]
Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo has vetoed a bipartisan legislative deal on election reform in which Republicans would have gotten voter ID, Democrats would have gotten wider availability of ballot lockboxes, and the Secretary of State’s office would have been in charge of rolling out a “new—and free—digital form of voter ID.” [Rio Yamat, AP; Taylor Burke/KOLO; my Nevada paper from last year]
Some progressives have circulated a fraud theory about election anomalies in Rockland County, NY, but the prosaic explanation is one of bloc ticket-splitting among some local Orthodox voters. [Charles Stewart, VoteBeat] Meanwhile, some on the right are “going wild over a new FBI report that supposedly proves China stole the 2020 election.” They should calm down [Will Sommer, The Bulwark]
“Hey, our push to abolish birthright citizenship isn’t going so well. Got any other ways to blast a big hole in the 14th Amendment?” [Hansi Lo Wang, NPR, on effort to redo apportionment of Representatives among states while ignoring requirement of “counting the whole number of persons in each State”]
The Second Circuit orders the acquittal of an Internet troll who put out memes advising viewers to vote by text and was convicted of conspiring to injure citizens in their right to vote. By finding insufficient evidence of conspiracy, the court avoided broader First Amendment issues with the conviction. [U.S. v. Mackey, Eugene Volokh]